An illusionist in a New World, what could go wrong?
by Gelbton
Summary: The programmer Shota just got a day off and decides to boot up one of his old games, Yggdrasil. What he didn't know is, that this day was the games' last day and also the first day of a brand new experience, the experience as an illusionist in another world. What will he do? How will he handle all these new situations? Find out in this story!
1. Chapter 1 Last Moments in Yggdrasil

It was the games last day, without him knowing, and luckily Shota had a day off. The reason for it wasn't as lucky as the fact itself. He got the day off because one of is co-workers passed away at the workplace due to his terrible physical condition.

Of course the company claimed that they didn't know about his condition and that they feel deeply sorry for this misfortune. The truth of course is, that this is all just stated by them to get a good PR.

"Looks like the death march became quite literal for the poor dude.. Fucking company should schedule realistic finishing days for developers, these capitalistic bastards!"

Shota didn't know the guy that died, he saw him now and then - his bad condition even visible to him - but he never talked and didn't work in the same project area as him.

Object-Oriented Programming doesn't leave space for much interaction yet the company gave them all a day off to recover 'from the shock and the loss of their friend and co-worker'.

Shota had to chuckle ironically at this knowing full well that tomorrow would be even harder because their finishing date only got rescheduled by one day and he heard that the UI department was even forced to continue the project from home on their "day off".

After eating his tasteless dinner he decided to spend the rest of his free evening by doing something that would let him escape that world for a bit and continued reading his manga Attack on Titan. Ah yeah the early 21st century really had the best manga he thought while flipping through the digital pages.

After quite a long time of just sitting there and reading he finished the manga and now got a feeling that he didn't have the luxury of experiencing often - he was bored.

"What am I supposed to do with my time now?" He didn't want to waste a single drop of his precious free-time, especially since a co-worker sacrificed himself for that day off.

He then saw is VM gear and while thinking what game he should try playing again he put the device onto his head and linked it up.

"Jeez so many games and I'm not in the mood for any of these" he said while mindlessly scrolling through them. He hasn't been on this in ages because of the lack of free time on his hand and now that he had the time, he didn't even know what to do, until -

"Yggdrasil" he mumbled seeing the icon of the fantasy game floating in front of his inner eye.

"I think it's time for a nostalgia overload" he chuckled while launching the game.

In the main menu he saw his character floating in front of him.

It could be best described as a humanoid silhouette made out of blue smoke-like essence on the outside with a simple face that didn't have any detail. From thereon downwards to it's waist it looks like a human shape dressed in a cloak that looks like the skin of an octopus with blue glowing rings on its surface.

From the waist downwards his character has a long tail made from a mysterious purple looking matter. The tail is completely flat and reaches 2 meters(6'7 feet) in length. at the end of the tail it widens a bit and splits into 3 parts, the left and right part smaller and ending in an pointed tip while the center part of the tail has a glowing yellow circle on it with an eye symbol inside.

His race was called "Aboleth" and was probably one of the rarest races played in the game.

When the race first came out there were quite a few players trying it out but soon realized that they will just easily get PKed and against monsters with low intelligence its attacks were almost useless so they also died to monsters fairly often. Because of this a lot of players quit playing as the race and it got marked as garbage by the games community.

"I haven't seen you in a long while bud" Shota said to his Avatar and joined the game, after sitting in the loading screen for a short time while looking at useless lore displayed he was finally in the game.

"Hmm it doesn't seem like there is too much going on at the moment" he said while looking around in his last spawned location. It was a safe zone in alfheim. When he first spawned here he was confused for a second and wondering why he wasn't inside the guild base but soon realized that he decided to set this as his spawn the last time before he left. He and

Nishikienrai stopped here the last time after scouting out a random humanoid guild that was fighting a boss so they could evaluate their power. Turned out these guys were useless so they just told their guild-mates started to PK them.

"Good old times, I remember saying that I will come back tomorrow before I left, well that obviously didn't happen - RIP" he mumbled feeling a bit guilty for abandoning his friends while looking around for any players but he couldn't find anyone.

Even though the chances of players hiding here and waiting to pk him were very low he still checked just in chase and activated his skill [Revelation of the truest sight]. Right after the circle on his tail started to glow and after a few seconds of activation he could see everything in his field of view up to 4 kilometers (4370 yards) that could potentially harm him, however in the list of collected information there were no hidden players and nothing that could seriously threaten him, except - "Oh yeah that would be a great opportunity to warm up and kick some ass!". At the top of the list something popped up called Ljósálfar-Noble which was one of the light-elf bosses in the game, the same boss he remembers the humanoid squad fight. He already knew the bosses skillset and attack pattern by spying on the fight so he swiftly decided to go there.

"So here we are, go bring it on" he said after arriving in a marble dome with bright pillars. a fat 3 meter tall elf with a lavish looking scepter in his hand. The AI was obviously not programmed to reply to him but rather to just initiate a fight once someone enters the dome.

Right before the entrance, which is the fight trigger. he casts [Programmed Illusion], a 7th tier spell, on the pillars next to the noble, after the short cast time a menu popped up with the programming menu containing a handful of options for the program of the illusion, Shota quickly selects "activate on aggression" and the action to perform "block target(aggressor)". The spell is usually useless mid fight because of the menu setup and cast time which leaves you vulnerable however it is really handy if you want to prepare for a fight. He then proceeds by casting a 2nd tier [mirror image] a few steps in front of him. Mirror Image basically just projects an image of your avatar that does exactly what you do and by walking in first, the image was the first thing the boss encountered.

Sadly his intelligence was too high and the AI didn't attack.

"Hmm smarter than a beast are you for sure" he chuckled and right after that he rushed into the fight with an insane speed. After entering the boss roared in an instant and started to cast it's opening attack.

"HAHA I already know what your plan is!" Shota said as all of a sudden illusions of the pillars started moving obscuring the elfs sight and thus making his binding spell miss. After moving past the pillar Shota was already channeling his next attack, [Nightmare Manifest] stunning the enemy completely in fear for 5 seconds, which is an insanely good amount, until his mental resistance kicked in and freed him. Shota quickly activated is racial [Gazing Blade], which made his tail raise once again and his yellow eye shine, right after that the two pointed tips of the tail fired a projectile which connected the same moment it was shot and two blades stuck deep inside the boss. Now he fired back with an druidic air slash spell firing multiple big waves of compressed air right at him. The moment before they hit he activated another skill called [illusion swap] which basically warps him with any illusion he created and let him easily evade the attack. Because there still was the mirror image from the beginning he could swap position and easily evade the attack, after that they clashed again and again.

…

the fight was almost over, it wasn't clear to an outstander yet but his Aboleth skill [Fear Observer] was now fully charged and Shota was ready to use one of his signature moves so he closed the distance after stunning the boss again for a short while and then activated the skill [Living Nightmare]. His tail extended and wrapped itself around the poor Noble that just freed himself from another stun just to see the him holding it's glowing eye right in front of his face. The eye started to shine in a blue light and for a while after that nothing happened, the Noble was just standing around, with the insanity effect symbol above him but not moving and after that, it just collapsed and died.

Shota was proud of himself seeing that he was still capable of mastering all his skills and abilities as he watches the boss dissolve into gold and some trash item drops - Or that's what should've happened - Instead a amount of gold that usually just drops if you finish a huge dungeon raid with a guild spawned and filled up the whole dome. Shota was just stunned in confusion as he watches how his character absorbs all the money onto its account. And admits the drops that should've been only trash he found some really rare items.

"What the heck is going on? How are there so many drops? Did I miss an update or something? That's just ridiculous!" He continued browsing through the items, drops that don't even make sense for an elf. Curious but also confused he looked at all the items and data crystals and admits them he found an item called "Developers message".

"Is that some kind of thing the shitty developers came up with to just give overpowered shit to noobs?" he thought while proceeding to open the message, in it it simply said "You don't need to raid bosses, come enjoy the last hours with us, in the Plateau of midgard ~ the Yggdrasil team". He read the message twice before realizing what it meant. "Last day..?" Shota quickly opens up the GUI and looks into the Global Chat, and what is this? A countdown and only 3 minutes left? Server shutdown? Last day of Yggdrasil?.."Oh shit, oh shit"Now he remembered that there wasn't even any lore in the loading screen earlier but rather just messages from the developers to the players. He quickly swiped to his friend list, in which he didn't actually expect anyone to be online in, but what he saw almost broke his heart.

Momonga. He was online, alone, inside the guild base. He was waiting. Waiting maybe for him, probably just for someone to spend the last moments of the game with. Yet he was sitting there alone, probably still in the conference room. Why didn't he call him, why didn't he send him a message? But deep inside he knew why, it was simply the way Momonga was, no matter what his problem was he never liked making it the problem of others, even though everyone in the guild always told him that they like helping him it still made him feel guilty. This was probably also one of these occasions, Momonga must have thought I had a good reason to be somewhere else, probably setting off fireworks with the devs and didn't want to disturb me..

"fuck FUCK FUCK! Aaargh stupid game why is there no notification that my friend is online?Why did no one tell me earlier that today is the last day of the game?! Why- " he realized that he was just making up excuses for his own ignorance. He quickly called Momonga and explained the situation to him.

...

"It's alright, I understand but at least we could talk before the game shuts down"

"But still I'm so sorry for not being with you, I won't make it to the guild base in time"

"It's fine trust me just call me after the game ends and we can talk for a little more"

"Yes awesome ide-...umm Momonga..I think I just obtained a World Item" Shota was just as confused as Momonga as all of a sudden a bright shining world item emerged from the pile of items.


	2. Chapter 2 New World no Concentration

_**Chapter 2 New World no Concentration**_

What Momonga just heard confused him. A world item? Obtaining these was without question one of, if not the hardest thing to accomplish in the game but after thinking about it for a short while it made sense. It was the last day of the game and so there was no reason for the developers to keep them hidden and thus probably just set the drop rate for them to the same level as other items.

"What item is it?" Momonga asked with an audible curiosity in his voice. Collecting rare things was always a thing he was known for and hearing that his friend found a new world item excited him.

"Is that just a coincidence or is there a GM watching just now?" he just replied.

"What's the matter?" "That world-item is like it's made for me.."

In front of Shota floated a necklace with a slid eye on it. It lazily hung of a thin string constructed from a dark matter and above it, a box floated simply saying 'Lokis Necklace' not giving away anything about its powers. Underneath a description stated 'This item has the ability to conjure illusions of the highest level and boosts the power of all illusions created by the user while equipped and makes it harder to break them. If an illusion above the 6th tier cast by the user is broken by someone else the item deems its user unworthy, killing him and taking all of his job levels related to illusions. The item would then change its owner to the person breaking the illusion.'

Below there was another bigger tab full of lore but Shota couldn't be bothered reading that right now so he just skimmed it real quick as he only had a few minutes left in the game.

"It is an item that is perfectly made for illusionists but also has huge drawbacks, casting illusions of tier 7 or higher causes the risk of dying instantly and pretty much becoming banned from ever being an illusionist."

"Hmm, that sounds pretty cool, even though it is weird that you out of everyone are the one who finds an item made especially for illusionists, I see why you thought that all this was a setup by the GMs."

"Yea I bet you these shitty devs made me find this simply to show me a big finger right before everything ends. I mean, an item especially made for one small sub-group of players and this appears just on the last day? That is just fucked up, these devs just managed to ruin my last few minutes of the game by just letting me know that I will never be able to use this."

"Hahaha" Momonga chuckled amused "that really seems like a bad joke, even though it is slightly amusing if I dare say so."

"Haha, you are lucky we only have one minute left otherwise I would come over and try out that items' full potential on you!"

"I love you too" Momonga simply replied with an ironic undertone in his voice and after that, there was just silence for a few seconds until they both burst into laughter.

Shota laughed hard until his eyes started to tear up a bit partly from amusement but mostly because of him realizing just now that he will never experience these times ever again in the same way and all of a sudden he realized how Momonga must've felt being the only person staying in the game for all that time. He was missing these times more than everyone else and it just made him sad realizing that it will all end tonight.

"I just got hit by some post-nut clarity level of realization that all of this will never come back" he stated with a slightly sad voice.

"I wonder why that post-nut clarity never ever came over Peroronchino." Momonga said in a nostalgic sounding voice indicating that this also reminded him of all his comrades.

"Haha if it would come over him every time he would probably be the wisest 39-year-old in the world."

They both chuckled again.

"But you are right, these times will never come back but I am still thankful for all these great memories we have created together."

There were only 30 seconds left until the server shuts down. Shota walked outside to enjoy the view of Alfheim. The sun was up high in the sky as there was no night in this world. He simply laid down on the ground looking at the sky.

"Yes these times were great, I will miss all this." Shota mumbled while still looking into the sky regretting not spending more time with the others in the game.

"Hihihihi" Momonga chuckled like a little kid all of a sudden which confused Shota a little bit.

"What's going on guild master?" Shota asked slightly mocking him by addressing him with that title.

"Ah, nothing I just abused my power as guild master a tiny little bit."

"Haha you won't tell me what you've done will you?"

"Nope, that is my little secret."

"Fair enough I won't object it is your good right to mess around a bit."

15 seconds remaining

"So that's it huh? I will miss all this." Shota said.

"Yes, that's it, tomorrow we have to go back to our normal life again."

10 seconds

"Ah fuck, I don't want to live my normal life tomorrow."

"Neither do I but tell me everything later"

"Yes I will but only if you tell me what you did with you Guildmaster power"

5 seconds.

"Maybe I will" Momonga replied not knowing that he will never be able to talk to anyone from this world ever again at all.

"See you on the other end then." Shota said closing his eyes preparing for the forced logout.

3 seconds.

2 seconds.

1 second.

And nothing happened.

He was still just laying there, waiting for something to happen. He opens his eyes just to instantly realize that something is off. It wasn't bright outside anymore, it rather looked like a normal forest at night with only weak moonlight hitting the ground. And then everything flashed over him, his eyesight was better but not just a bit but A LOT. He usually had to wear quite strong glasses and now his eyesight was perfectly fine even better than it should've been possible. He was looking around for a bit, just getting used to his eyesight as he noticed another train of thoughts already pass through his head. The next one was probably one of the most bizarre realizations he had to make in his whole life: His legs where gone.

"What is this?" He asked being surprised at his voice the very next moment. It sounded calm, confident and somehow a bit entrancing, it sounded like the way someone would talk knowing that he fully outsmarted someone else.

My legs are gone. Just realizing that fact convinced him that this was all real. He didn't even think of Yggdrasil 2 or some developer prank - He. Didn't. Have. Legs. No legs just a wiggle-wiggle tail! That was enough to fully accept that this was real after realizing that there was no reason to question his realization.

He tried moving his tail and it obediently manifested the movements its owner visualized. What was even weirder was that he seemed to be receiving a kind of visual image from the yellow eye symbol in his tail, he moved his tail closer to his face, just to see himself staring at his featureless face, he then looked at his whole body by slowly moving his tail around himself. He wasn't nervous or haunted by anxious thoughts, he was simply inspecting himself and considering how much fun it was to have a tail, he also realized that he always floated in the air no matter what his tail did. His thoughts were simply: Okay my avatar is now real that is pretty cool what else is there?

Why did evolution not give every human a tail he wondered while being absolutely fascinated by his new body part but then he remembered a quote from a book of the 21st century he once read that said: "evolution rather works by throwing millions of weak organisms into a dangerous environment rather than a superpower that fixes everything." And it was true, sadly a tail wasn't a result of that evolution for humans.

He brought his tail in front of him again and experimented some more with it, he moved it as fast as he could realizing that this thing had an insane speed. He tried standing on it by fully extending it straight down but he realized that balancing on it was pretty hard and he just fell over after standing 7 meters( 23 feet) in the air, somehow he wasn't scared of falling onto the ground. It was the fact that he wasn't scared that made him realize something-

"Am I even still myself? I just turned into my avatar from a game and I am not even concerned about anything. These thoughts aren't exactly normal."

He then decided to inspect his surroundings a little more and his breath got taken the same moment by realizing what he saw. He was standing in a big spruce wood forest with the ground just covered in soft grass and the trees standing tall above the ground. Even by standing on the tip of his tail he just reached the lower parts of the trees needle branches. He never even saw a real forest like this and after his eyes wandering up a bit higher he saw the sky. He saw the sky, a real, clear night sky. This was probably one of the rarest sights to see in his old world and just looking at the sky gave him an overflow of ecstatic feelings. This was partly caused by his new sight abilities. He decided to go up to the top of the trees. As he realized he could fly by swimming in the air like it was water. He just wiggled his tail a bit and was already flying over the trees a bit - he loved that tail already -.

He was just looking at the trees as he started thinking. My body doesn't hurt anymore, that terrible back pain from my old body is gone, my sight is awesome and I have a tail. The question if he wants to go back was already answered as he was just flying in circles and doing loopings in the air. He then realized, that he probably had even more cool stuff to try out and maybe find out where he ended up now considering that this didn't look like the world of Yggdrasil, something just told him that there was nothing dangerous nearby and he trusted that thought thinking it must be some newly acquired sense of danger that comes with that new body.

Oooh damn, there was so much new stuff to try out! Where should he start?

He sat down at one of the tree branches from which he could overlook most of the forest. He was just thinking about what to do next as he all of a sudden saw an owl sitting on another branch a few trees away. He swiftly floated near it, however, the owl noticed right away and started observing him sharp-eyed ready to run for it any second.

He stopped closing their distance right after noticing that. "This seems like a great opportunity to try some stuff out!" He activated his racial skill [Cover of Natures Ambassador], there was a tier 3 spell doing the same thing as this ability called [Calm beasts]. Both of them made wild beasts that aren't super aggressive by nature and usually only attack non-forest creatures ignore you and just let you pass. However, his skill was a bit handier than the spell version. His tail started glowing in a weak yellow hue and after seeing that the owl didn't seem to mind his presence anymore he could continue getting closer to it. Now that he was in front of it, he started wondering what he should try out now. He just confirmed that his skills work and using them seemed as natural as wiggling his tail around.

He got a funny idea of what to try out. He cast [Major Image] on the branch below them and created a small mouse he visualized. This spell creates an image with smell, temperature, and sounds of a real creature however once you touch it you realize its just an illusion because your hand would go right through it. He made the mouse squeak and run as he mentally commands it while watching it with his tail. The owl soon picked up on it and got ready for its attack. He just stared at the owl as it grabbed nothing trying to pick up the mouse. The owl seemed visibly confused and Shota just had to laugh at this owl trying to catch the mouse. He made the mouse jump unnaturally high into the air, even making it run off the branch at some point and just continue in the air. The owl didn't seem to realize and just observed the mouses' weird behavior. He tested how far he could go until the owl would realize it wasn't real, however, it still kept trying. After two minutes, however, it stopped and just sat down again simply accepting the fact that it cannot catch that weird mouse.

"I like you, you are my pet now, I will call you Gerald" Shota said activating his [Charm Species]. His tails eye lights up pink for a short time and in the next moment, the owl was already domesticated fully affected by the charm spell.

He then got back on the ground with Gerald sitting on his shoulder.

"You know what Gerald, you probably know more about this world than I do, don't you want to guide me?" However, the owl just looked at him tilting his head.

"Well that wasn't very helpful, go find someone that can help me find out then!" The owl took off his shoulder right after. That was just one of his small experiments on finding out if his charm spell also gives him power of command and apparently it does as long as it is in the targets power to fulfill its duty.

"Am I here because I said so before I logged off? Because I said I don't want to go to work? And if I'm here maybe Momonga is too! Why did I not think of this earlier? Damn that new body made my way of thinking completely irrational!"

He quickly cast the message spell as he felt a kind of invisible string just extend from his body looking for Momonga, it felt like it was further extending at an insane speed just to fail after a few seconds giving him a feeling that indicated it had failed.

Slightly frustrated he decided to find something else that's interesting

He started jumping from tree to tree realizing that it isn't even as easy as it always seemed in these naruto mangas. These trees don't just have their branches stick out like this to perfectly land on them. However, it was still fun to him especially considering his speed. That too fascinated him. He was so fast, he could easily move around in the forest at an insane speed and it was so much fun for him to just jump around. He had to try out is physical abilities further when he has the time. Now he was just looking for something that could entertain him. And soon he found something, it was a

pack of wolves that was looking around in the forest, trying to find food. They too ignored him due to his skill he activated earlier but he landed near them just observing what they were about to do. He soon realized that these weren't the normal wolves he knew from his world. These seemed to be more like Yggdrasil creatures but still a bit different, they looked like normal wolves but had evil red glowing eyes and there was drool dripping down their mouths as they were scouting for prey like berserkers. He thought what power these wolves might have compared to Yggdrasil even though his new thoughts made him think about just messing with them with illusions, Shota still wanted to measure their strength. He cast [Mental Prison] at one of the wolves, still a bit fascinated by how natural spellcasting was to him, which trapped the wolf in his own mind. In it he still kept going and wandered around, however, all of his mental commands never left his mind, in the real world the wolf collapsed right after the spell was cast. A tier 7 spell that he actually really liked because it was hard for others to realize that they were inside an illusion and unlike sleep they might just lay around for a good minute until realizing that they were actually not fighting or walking around, enough time to set up a perfect ambush around their unconscious body.

Shota took the wolf and started thinking about how he could measure its strength compared to Yggdrasil. His body quickly made the decision for him as he just slapped the dog on the head with quite a bit of force, around the power you'd use to slap someone in the face just to see the poor doggos skull completely squish into a gory pulp of blood under his hand. He was a bit irritated at his action and the result of it. Huh, a bit inconvenient but we made some advancements he thought. He now confirmed that he was ridiculously overpowered and that really calmed down his human part. The same part of him wondered why he wasn't disturbed at this at all but then he just thought that the readers were probably already sick of protagonists that question everything and just accepted it as a change in his personality.

He then quickly rushed back to the other wolves and started thinking how he could toy with them next. His thirst to just observe others react to an environment he could toy with was something overpowering all of his other thoughts. He had power and he wanted to use that as much as he could.

So just to see how well the wolf pack could communicate in their group if a problem occurred he cast [blind] on one of the wolves in the middle. Turns out their communication is not the best. The wolf instantly started walking backward probably thinking something was covering its eyes, which already greatly amused Shota. After a few seconds, the creature seemed to realize and started wiping its face with its paws and then sniffing the air. The other wolves didn't seem to have realized yet that something was wrong with their mate. He then started making weird barking noises while looking at something, it first seemed to alert the others but after they realized that it was a false alarm they seemed to get annoyed at the blind one for disturbing their mission so they started growling at it. The blind one still trying to orientate then got a quick bite into his front leg by the one that seemed to be the pack leader. The blind wolf then tried to bite back however being completely off-target just bit the air. After that something happened that was quite unexpected. The pack leader instantly bit through the poor wolfs neck. He could see the life slowly leave the wolfs blind eyes as the teeth dug deeper into his neck.

Quite interesting he thought, now time for his next experiment. What would the pack do without a leader?

[Seeming] was the next spell he wanted to try out. He cast it on the leader wolf changing his appearance into the one of a baby deer that smelled of cooked steak(that was the best smell coming to his mind). The other wolves just looked at their leader as he transformed into probably the most delicious prey they have ever seen. It was the curiosity over what simple creatures, whose only purpose in a game would be to kill the player, reaction would be if confronted with difficult problems. How would they react if their leader was super tasty all of a sudden? He will find out soon as the pack first seemed a bit confused, sniffing at the deer that was their leader just a moment ago, however right after they started growling and slowly encircling the deer. To make it more interesting Shota made the illusion not alter his sounds so they could still hear the deer bark at them. Interestingly the smallest one of them lowered his ears and just sat down tilting his head at the deer as the others started pounding at it and killing it after a short struggle. In the fight, the leader somehow wounded the first unlucky one of his clan that attacked him which means that there were only 3 and a half wolves left, two of them feasting on the deer illusion with the other one dying of its open wound at its neck with the third one still just observing. Everyone with a bit of intelligence would've realized that there was something off about the wolf transforming into prey. He tried the potency of his illusion in raw power by casting [False Attack] of an arrow striking on one of the wolves faces.

Only the wolf could see that illusion, however, the wolf died in an instant, which quite surprised him. It usually causes some psychological damage however it rarely works like a death spell even on low-level monsters. He tries the same spell with a weaker attack and again the wolf died. He looks down on him seeing a necklace dangling from his neck. "Are you enhancing my illusions strength?"He wondered. The last wolf was now visibly scared and just looking around confused. Let's find out just how much more intelligent you are compared to these other mindless beasts Shota thought already getting ready to continue his experiment.

Though, he got interrupted as he saw something coming closer to him. He already knew what it was as the owl came closer. He quickly held out his arm for it to land on and asked: "So what did you find, Gerald?"

**Author Note: If you guys have some spare time could you please leave a quick review on my writing style and thing that I could improve on? Feedback is always appreciated.^^ Thnx 4 reading**


	3. Chapter 3 Sometimes Shit is all You need

"Who do you think you are you filthy bastard!? I want this one handcuffed and gagged and keep him separated from the rest of them!" shouted Giselbert. He was already delayed by half a day because of that moldy wheel breaking down before they even left the town. He had to deliver his wares in two days and these slaves trying to escape just stole him even more time. "Now!" the wolf demi-human, who was causing the uproar earlier, shouted and right after the ropes tying the wrists of the other wolf-humans together loosened. They probably untied them earlier and were just waiting for the signal so they could all break free at the same time to maximize their chances of escape.

After the signal, most of them instantly ran away and dispersed in all directions.  
"Don't stand around GET THEM! I should've invested my money in some steel handcuffs and not you useless pricks!" The merchant shouted at his employees and bodyguards which began chasing after the escapees after a brief moment of confusion.

"Quick this way!" Munk said waving his arm in a motion forward while waiting for his wife carrying his son to catch up leading them deeper into the forest. "Honey my feet they hurt. I can't run that fast." "It's alright let me carry Luan, it'll take some weight off you, but we need to get away quick! If they find us they will separate me from the rest of you." The demi-human mother quickly handed over the son to his husband as they ran further into the forest.

"Papa I'm scared I don't want to be separated from you" the little demi-human boy cried on his dad's shoulder. "We will be fine, no worries just try to keep quiet so they can't find us!". Suddenly his nose picked up a scent. It was the scent of one of his people, they must be hiding nearby so he quickly decided to go after them. The scent got stronger and after turning behind a small bush into a more clear spruce wood area he saw something he didn't expect. It wasn't one of the slaves he escaped with but another wolf-human. In fact, it was a little girl around the age of his son, maybe one or two years older wearing the same bland slave clothing as all other slaves do. She seemed lost and a bit confused. A weird thing about her, that he noticed right away is, that she had a small owl resting on her shoulder. Munk slowed down and started to move carefully trying to keep the girl calm and not scare her any further. What was she doing alone in the forest? Was she also one of the slaves? How come he never saw her then? Does she live in the forest? More questions were stacking up in his head as he was inspecting the little girl.

"Everything is alright, stay calm. Are you one of us?" he asked trying to solve the mystery around the girl. After further inspecting her, he realized that she was actually really pretty, especially for a slave girl. If he knew that other people were reading his thoughts at that moment he would've probably also pointed out, that he's not a lolicon but then again he might not have really cared as he was running for his life.

The girl just shook her head at his question so he tried the most simple way of finding out who she is by asking "Who are you?". The girl now responded with an unexpected harmonic voice and said: "I'm Mala, I ran away yesterday, and now I'm hiding in the forest."

"I'm Luan!" His son burst out on his shoulder covering his mouth and looking away ashamed right after, he also seemed to try to cover up that he cried all of a sudden.

"Alright then Mala, we will stay with you, currently there are slave traders chasing us but we will stay hidden, no worries." Munk's wife said. "Okay, thank you for staying with me," Mala said with a cute smile with perfectly arranged white teeth and two small fangs.

"How did you survive out here all on your own the whole night? There are a lot of monsters up at that time, even the slave traders camp got attacked tonight."

"I'm just pretty good at hide 'n seek," she said with an uncaring tone. Munk simply concluded from that confusing answer that she hid from the monsters. "And besides that, I wasn't entirely alone, I still had Gerald with me!" she said while petting the small owl on its head. Munk and his wife exchanged confused glances and decided to not ask any further questions regarding the weird girl.

After Gerald had led him to the traders' camp in the forest he initially thought that this would be the perfect cliché-moment for a superhero entrance, a suppressed minority, a person in power only caring about money, brutal punishments for people who resist. Simply the perfect villain to be defeated by the hero however he deemed that approach boring as it was just so generic, there wasn't any spice to it. That's the reason why Shota didn't intervene with their revolt or with them being chased and brutally punished by the traders and their bodyguards. "I have to do something though, that merchant really seems like a jerk... Gerald, go shit on his seat inside the caravan!" Right after that Gerald took off to fulfill his honorable duty. While Gerald was on his way to leave his present, Shota decided to turn invisible and inspect their camp. He was really fascinated by their level of technology and their way of living. If he'd have to say a time he would say this whole world took place around the 14th century. He was thinking about what to do next as he was floating through the camp and inspecting things that caught his interest while ignoring the slaves were brutally dragged on their tails and ears next to him. A part of him was really getting frustrated at how inhumane his mind became. He always got distracted at things that he would've never prioritized over morally wrong things in his old life. He knows that it's wrong but when actually acting the way he would as a human he feels really bored and it just seems like he is missing out on actual opportunities and trying to fight these thoughts and his remodeled personally just caused him to end up in a temporary identity crisis that simply ended with him finally disregarding his human thoughts and for some time even completely forgetting about them. It feels weird to him but also right. He's got his new identity while still remembering his old one and he can't really identify which each one of them. He finally came up with a plan on what to do next as he arrived back at the branch from which he was watching the camp. Gerald was also coming back to him and he really had to chuckle seeing the owl flying towards him while knowing exactly what he just did. He opened his inventory and got out some bits of high-quality meat from Yggdrasil that gave you some decent, but for him useless, buffs and, judging by Gerald's reaction also tasted high-quality. After quickly glancing at the slaves again he decided to disguise into something that would be the most helpless seeming one of them. He landed somewhere relatively close to the alpha demi-human that started the revolt earlier, dispelled his invisibility and cast [Perfect Illusion] on himself. After a short cast-time, he turned into the little slave girl he envisioned. With such a high tier of illusion magic, it should be impossible to see through his disguise and he could even feel his new body while still being able to control his old one too. He could still use his tail and move it but could also move his illusionary legs, he could move the visible as well as the hidden parts of his body equally easily. "Nice that's cool!"

…

After meeting Munk and his family it started to become a bit awkwardly silent and their kid was constantly staring at him for some reason which made the whole thing a bit uncomfortable.'I know you guys just want to live but I kinda don't want to live in the forest with you for the rest of my time, I have to do this' Shota thought to himself as he cast [Silent Triplet Magic: Block sense] numbing their strong hearing and smelling skills while at the same time leading bodyguards to their location by making them chase after an illusion Shota created and programmed to come right at them. They were still hiding behind the bushes while Munk was taking care of his wife's sore feet with a special but bland-looking piece of cloth that Shota gave him. He told Munk to keep it as it might help him in a dire situation. A bit confused he accepted it probably thinking that Mala was making stuff up with her child's mind to calm him down.

He/She was sitting around and playing with Gerald a bit while Luan was still staring at him.' Did he see through my disguise? Probably not, he seems to be fascinated by Gerald or something. He didn't come over to talk to me. He seems intimidated...' Shota decided to smile at him to ease the situation a bit which made Luan blush.

And because Shota is a typical fantasy novel protagonist he won't realize that the little Luan has a crush on his girl form. He, instead of picking up on the really obvious hints will simply be confused and ignore that weird reaction because protagonists are always shitty at picking up on hints. While the author was writing about how he will make the protagonist an idiot for his convenience the guards approached their hiding place and slowly started to surround them after seeing that there were more slaves that didn't notice them yet. While they were surrounding them Shota simply continued to play with Gerald while being fully aware of their presence. His tail inspected all of his surroundings and its vision made him see everything clearly while from their perspective they just saw a cute innocent girl playing with an owl. They counted down from three and quickly ambushed them. Munk screamed surprised and confused but shortly after he was knocked out by a low-quality sword-hilt while the others got tackled and dragged away. Shota didn't even bother to put up a fight as one of the merchant's employees just bear-hugged him from behind and carried him away. His goal was complete - Become a slave and obtain information while being taken to a town. Just then he realized how nice the feeling is to not be bound by any time limits, he feels immortal, he could waste years doing nothing and not feel like he wasted a minute. The value of time dropped to zero and it was probably one of the greatest realizations to make in his existence.

'These guys smell horrible' Shota thought while being carried to the camp. 'I wonder what this world will be like, maybe there is a Demon Lord I have to defeat, or maybe we all live encircled by giant walls! I wonder if they even know what magic is...'. In the game, he usually assisted when it came to information collection because of his extraordinary skills and adaptability. However using these now might reveal his strength in the long run and that seems pretty boring to him besides wasting resources on the next best bodyguard wouldn't be the smartest approach, he would probably do that on their leader or the merchant later to get the most intel. In the meantime, he could just ask them nicely to find out some things.

"Where will you take us?" "Shut up you demi-human scum! Making us run through the forest just because of you bastards. I'm not in the mood to talk!" 'Well, he did have a point.' Shota thought while being a little bit frustrated at how hard they were making this. A part of his mind came up with killing all of them in one sweep to demonstrate his true power while another part just told him to simply manifest a big pile of dogshit and making him step into it. He decided to ignore both of them even though the last idea seemed really tempting. 'This new mind is also quite genius, huh?'

Soon they arrived in the camp where most of the slaves were already tied together, covered in bruises from their punishment. It is quite obvious that they couldn't run very far due to the sore feet they had from walking a whole day without shoes.

"These were the last ones we could find Mr. Giselbert" "Alright then that means only two escaped. The loss will be taken from your payment!" The leader of the bodyguard group, a bigger and more experienced looking man, seemed like he wanted to protest but simply took the punishment.

"Now give this cunt a proper punishment, but make sure you don't damage him too much!" he said while pointing at Munk, his son sobbing while being handcuffed with ropes. Meanwhile, Shota was just looking around not really caring about the whole situation until something made him smile. It was Gerald, he could see him far away through the trees coming towards them. The owl came closer and landed on his shoulder. The slaves around him seemed pretty confused at the sight of a little girl petting an owl. They started asking Mala/Shota questions about where he came from. In the background, Giselbert was shouting at one of his employees and saying something about wiping his seat and washing his pants, however, no one really cared because they were all fascinated by the new girl and entranced by her comforting voice. Shota didn't really understand what fascinated them about him but after taking a closer look(which was pretty easy with his supervision) he saw that he still stood out quite a bit from the others. His hands were still very soft and clean, there was some dirt on his skin but no actual wounds or bruises. Even the younger slaves already had their hands covered in bruises from working and carrying heavy things. He answered their questions about her past with simple lies or avoided them to not seem any more suspicious. From them, he found out that they were inside a country called the Baharuth Kingdom in which slave trade was pretty common and that they were on their way to a town called Dreiklingen. Usually, they would be sold as slaves to do physical labor or please their owners in other ways. While he was talking to the other slaves he noticed that Luan was still sobbing.  
'Must be tough for him to be separated from his dad in such a situation' he thought as he walked over to him. "No worries, the cloth I gave your dad was a magical one, it will help him!" he said trying to calm him down. Luan looked up to her with big eyes "But magical items are very expensive!" 'Ah shit, so magic is an actual thing in this world.' "Hehe umm, you know it's a different kind of magic, it's like a ... lucky charm!" The truth is, the cloth simply has a programmed illusion enchantment on it that will release a strong scent when waved a few times. He used the same scent while taming the wolf-beast that seemed to have the highest intelligence(and didn't get murdered by him) he encountered earlier. It's training made the beast recognize the person with the same smell as its owner and subjugate itself to him. If Munk manages to figure out how it work the beast might make it in time to help him. "Thank you, Mala!" Luan said while giving him a hug with his short kid arms. Shota saw the hug coming, everyone's movements seemed very slow to him. Even though all of this he was still surprised and caught off-guard by the little boys' hug. It reminded him a bit of his nephew he sadly didn't see very often. "It's fine, but now you need to rest a bit, the caravan will travel further in the morning. You need to be fit." There was no way Luan could've seen the tail with the glowing eye facing him as he was hugging Mala. [Sleep] Shota mumbled as his tail started to glow in a weak blue hue and he felt Luan getting a bit heavier on his shoulders. He quickly put the sleeping boy on the ground making sure he will rest in a comfortable position next to his mom. "The morning can come." he mumbled to himself in an optimistic tone as he slowly started putting all the slaves to sleep, until- "Get that filthy bird!" Giselbert shouted pointing at Gerald who was casually eating some meat from a dinner plate and threw his dinner knife at him. [Distort Reality] Shota cast in time, shifting the flight path and the very position of the knife making it miss the owl. After seeing the knife land next to it, the owl quickly flew away to safety. 'You better be grateful that I'm not in the mood to go John Wick mode right now!' Shota said to himself while being visibly pissed.[Silent: Scare] This tier 1 spell simply induced a weaker version of the fear effect on the target for a brief moment, but it was enough to make the chubby merchant fall of his chair. To bystanders, it simply looked like he jumped because of the owl taking off and judging by their reaction it was an amusing sight. "Haha, I'll make you regret even thinking about hurting my owl!" [Silent: Dream] He said in a dramatic tone as he cast his next spell to torture the poor man even further.

...

Later this night Giselbert had a really horrifying nightmare about a giant owl pecking at him and after burying him alive under a giant pile of birdshit which made him feel more exhausted than before. The slaves, however, seemed unnaturally well-rested, considering that they don't even have beds. There also was that annoying incident the same night with a wolf beast appearing in the camp taking down two of his employees and freeing one of the slaves. Giselbert didn't know that this major annoyance was just the beginning of many more weird occurrences that were about to unfold...

**AN: Thank you all for taking the time to read my story, I'm sorry it took that long for me to just write the third part, I hope that won't become the normal wait time for a new chapter. Please let me know what you think about this chapter. I hope it wasn't boring. Thank you all again for reading!**


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